Gaëlle Pietri pays tribute to her ex-companion Gaspard Ulliel in a book

The couple lived six years of happiness and welcomed a little boy, Orso, before separating. The disappearance of the actor in an "absurd" skiing accident deeply upset Gaëlle Pietri. A shock that she tells in the columns of the Journal Du Dimanche. “At the very moment he was hit by another skier, on January 18, 2022, I collapsed in my bathroom in Paris. I felt like I was giving birth while being punched in the stomach with a penknife, an unbearable pain. Writing this book, Le Temps de te dire adieu, was liberating for her, a “refuge” to “manage this unexpected drama”.

All the more unexpected when you know that Gaspard Ulliel was an experienced skier who “made descents by helicopter, in the high mountains”. His fall on a blue run, caused by a collision with another skier, was more than unexpected. Gaëlle Pietri explains that “we don't know exactly what happened. Certainly Gaspard had no helmet, both were going fast, the track was almost deserted”. Circumstances too vague for justice to incriminate the Lithuanian skier, exonerated.

The Corsican top model denounces the lack of delicacy of the fans and the immoderate reactions on social networks to the announcement of her death. “You not only have to manage your grief, that of your child, but also the expectations of others, inappropriate remarks and behavior.” Sometimes overtaken by anger, Gaëlle Pietri says she was angry with him "sometimes I talk to him, I argue with him and I say to him: 'You let me down again.'"

A book about the mourning of a woman who has suffered so much. First of a painful rupture, “when the other withdraws the glance which it poses on you, one has the impression that one is going to die”, before a final separation. But Le Temps de te dire adieu is also the work of a woman who sees the end of the tunnel thanks to writing. A possible professional retraining, while the beauty model is affected by vitiligo. "Perhaps this disease is sending me a message, a sign that my destiny is elsewhere, in writing."

Time to say goodbye to you, available April 26, 2023 from Grasset editions, €17.