A Letter to Keep You Safe

by Rachaele Hambleton

Genres: Friendship

Synopsis

The new novel from Rachaele Hambleton, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Different Kind of Happy.

A story of heartbreak, love and hope.


Lou has had more than her fair share of heartbreak but she has always managed to keep going...until now.


When her friend Martha ends up in hospital after a brutal attack at the hands of her ex-partner, Lou is struggling to see a way through.


Lou has been a good friend to Martha but she has been keeping secrets. Secrets she has kept to herself for a long time. If Lou had shared more of her story maybe Martha wouldn't be in hospital now.


Wracked with guilt, Lou decides she must write a letter. A letter to tell her truth once and for all. A letter to show Martha that with friends, family and people you love around you there is a way through the darkness. A letter to keep Martha safe.

Release date: March 26, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 70000

Sample

Dear Martha,

I heard what happened just before 9 a.m. today. I was pulling up to your house to drop off Woody’s teddy and sun cream when Jen called.

She was at work when you arrived in the ambulance – she was the first person to see you. She said when you got to the hospital it was obvious immediately that things were bad. Your right eye was totally closed over and swollen, and you had blood coming out of your ear. They wheeled you in on the bed and you vomited. You were making sense at times, but then not so much, and your voice was slurred. When you were making sense, you were scared. Of course you were scared.

Jen said she could see you were fading away as you waited on the hospital trolley, and they wasted no time getting your head scanned.

You were taken straight from the CT scanner to surgery.

They said you would have died if they hadn’t operated. The bleed from your brain was so bad that your brain was being pushed over to one side. They removed the blood that was trapped between your brain and skull, and are hopeful that there won’t be any more bleeding. You’re lucky to have survived … or are you?

Is it bad that I think that? Does it make me a horrid person, to wonder if you’d have been better off not making it? But I remember the attacks that I survived, the ones I woke from … And I know you, I know how our brains work – you’re one of my best friends, we’ve had these conversations a million times – and I know when you wake from this, the chances are you might wish you weren’t here.

My manager – you know, Mags – was incredible. I sat outside your empty house and called her straight away. I could hear she was trying to hold it together. She’s grown to care so much about you, Martha – from that first risk assessment she did when you were originally referred to us for domestic abuse support, to the help she and the team have given you over the last few months. I could hear from her voice that this is going to affect her – but not just her, our whole team. The work all of them, and you, have done, the progress you’d made … This is going to be heartbreaking for everyone.

I returned home at 10.15 a.m. I don’t know why it took me so long to make the ten-minute car journey back, but it did. I sat in the car and cried. I screamed, I gripped the steering wheel, wanting to punch it. I rested my forehead against it and just let out fat, loud sobs whilst the tears splashed onto my bare legs – sobs for you, for Woody, for me, for all the women and children like us. Tears for all of us, for the fact that so many lives look like this, because these fucking men continue to hurt and kill us, every single day.

I don’t understand. No, I do. I get it, all of it – because I led your life for so long when I was married to David. The secrets, the lies. My desperation to believe he would change. The way I listened every time he promised me he would do better, try harder, get help. The guilt I felt when he would cry about losing the boys if I left, when he told me I was ripping our family apart. I understand all of it. It fucks me off that I understand it so well. I wish I didn’t.

Jen assumed he had attacked you randomly on your way back from the nursery run, but from the sounds of it now, it was a planned meeting. I keep going back over the last few weeks. I know you’d had some down days, but nothing that would massively red flag to me that you were missing him to the point of meeting him. You were relieved when he got those bail conditions, and you fought so hard to get the non-molestation order in place … But the police are suggesting that you planned to meet him. I feel like I should have checked in with you more, asked you if you were OK – actually OK, not just pretending to be.

I wish you’d have told me, Jen, Meg or Jo – or all of us, last week when we were having dinner and things felt OK. You seemed OK. Seeing as the four of us have been best friends for over two years, I feel annoyed at myself – especially given where I’ve come from – that I didn’t see this coming. I’m so devastated that you didn’t tell any of us that you were planning to meet him – but I also get it. I can’t help but wonder whether, if I’d shared more of my story with you before this, you wouldn’t have gone. And right now we would both be on our way to work as we are every Monday morning, chatting on the phone about everything and nothing whilst you beg Woody to get his shoes on and George sorts his Pokémon cards in the back of the car. And tomorrow we would still be going to the zoo with Jo and Megan and all the kids as we’d arranged – something you were so excited about doing with Woody, as he loves animals and you said this was going to be his first ever zoo trip.

Instead, you’re in a coma after Craig attacked you with a brick, and I don’t know what the future looks like now for you or Woody.

Mags was already at my house when I arrived back. She stayed for most of the morning. We drank tea, curled up at either end of my sofa. We went between total silence and non-stop talking.

I feel lucky to have Mags as a manager. She’s such a decent human – passionate about women’s rights and domestic abuse. The way she treats the women and children we support is incredible. I’ll never forget when she first interviewed me for the position of support worker a year after I’d left David. Her knowledge and experience, teamed with her warmth and gentleness, made me really want the job. It made me want to be like her, to support women at the worst times in their lives. I was excited to work for someone who made me feel safe and supported within spending less than an hour in their company – something that, in those days, was almost impossible for me.

She wasn’t surprised you’d arranged to meet Craig this morning. In fact, it was kind of like she’d expected it to happen – but she’s been in this line of work for over two decades and, in that time, she’s seen and heard things that you or I probably couldn’t imagine. She’s into double figures now, with the number of women she’s lost to suicide – suicide due to the effects of domestic abuse. Most of those women’s former partners, the perpetrators of that abuse, continue to roam the streets. Some even have the full custody of the children they created together – free to go on and destroy more lives. So I suppose after supporting so many damaged, vulnerable and broken women, it takes a lot to shock Mags. But even though she isn’t shocked, she is sad. So sad, that knowing how kind and beautiful you are, fun and sparkly – you’re now in hospital with horrific injuries.

We had a little cry together again before she left. It felt good to have her there with me, to make me feel like I wasn’t going mad or making it about me, which was how it felt at first. Mags made me feel calmer, reassured that this situation is affecting everyone around us, no matter how they knew you – and that’s OK. It’s a good thing we’re all devastated by it, because it shows how loved you are. And then the reality hit me – that this is truly shit. It’s shit and sad and devastating. Mags reassured me that it’s OK for it to feel hard and heavy right now. It should absolutely feel hard and heavy.

It’s now 4 p.m. I still feel nauseous. I’m still in shock.

I’ve just realised no food has passed my lips since I sat here this morning, scoffing a huge bowl of porridge that was too hot to eat, burning the roof of my mouth as I rushed to take Milo out for a long walk before I left the house for the day. I haven’t even had a coffee since then – I’d usually be at least three down by now.

I’m also aware this whole thing has triggered so much for me. Although you and the other girls know about my many years of abuse, I have never really spoken in depth to you about the repeat attacks, the sexual abuse, the injuries from each incident … or the final one, a year before I met you, where I was operated on in the same hospital you’re in now.

I have so many thoughts on the immediate future, and how it looks for Woody.

Woody.

All the stuff flying around my head about what will happen to him now. What has he been told? Right now, he’s staying with Jo and Jamie – we made that choice because he’s as obsessed with Jo and Jamie’s youngest daughter, Dotty, as she is with him. They’re months apart in age, and we felt it’s probably best for him to be there, out of all our homes, because he has the distraction of all their kids and a busy house with everything he needs.

I can’t imagine how he will feel. He absolutely adores you – and what an affectionate and incredible mum you are to him. It feels like it’s just been the two of you forever, even though you only left Craig a few months ago. It reminds me so much of my boys and me – an unbreakable bond where, being their mum, you know everything they’re thinking or feeling without them saying a word. Although Woody is still not yet three, there is no one else that matters to him like you. You make his whole world go round – don’t forget that when you wake, Martha.

I know from my own experience how easy it is to let the guilt and shame consume you. It’s impossible not to blame yourself, to feel like you’re a bad mum – but none of this is on you. It’s on Craig – every single bit of it. And the love you have for Woody, the love I’ve had the honour of witnessing over the last two years – it’s irreplaceable.

I remember the day I met you, when you popped into the café with Woody after seeing the ‘Staff Needed’ sign outside. By this point Jo and her mother-in-law, Pat, had taken over the café, but I was living above in the flat and would pop down most days – for my own need to be around them, as they were a huge support to me at that time, as well as to help them transition as smoothly as possible with the takeover.

Woody was in his pram. He had just turned one, and I remember smiling at how similar you both were. Your hair was the exact same colour – all these different shades of blondes including white, a straw yellow and a honey colour. Beautiful locks, you both have, all the colours entwined together – yours falling down your back and Woody’s around his ears in ringlet curls – wild and untamed. He was dressed in an oversized Rip Curl T-shirt, black leggings and little black-and-white Vans socks – the bottom of his chunky legs on show, tanned from spending his days with you on the beach. He was sucking on a bright teething necklace, trying to shove as much of it as possible into his drooling mouth. It’s funny how you don’t ever want to be judgemental but you still make judgements. It’s like your brain just does it automatically – it can’t be helped or stopped. Trendy, I thought, when I set eyes on him. Trendy, because of you.

You were so beautiful. That was my immediate thought when I saw you. Beautiful and tiny, about a size six. You could have easily passed as a teenage girl from behind. You were wearing black cycling shorts with tanned legs like Woody, cute matching black-and-white ankle socks and Vans trainers, topped with a Santa Cruz oversized T. Trendy, I thought again, studying you over the top of my peppermint tea. Trendy skater girl.

You were super-tanned, glowing, but you triggered me immediately. Something about you made my belly flip. I could feel your anxiety – you were hyper-vigilant, eyes darting everywhere whilst making no eye contact with anyone – as if you were scanning for danger. I convinced myself I was being crazy – I used to do that a lot. Not so much now. Over time I have begun to realise that when it comes to me meeting new women, I get it right with the red flags more than I get it wrong, so I question my gut far less than I used to. The gut, I have come to realise, is one of the most powerful things in our bodies. I raise my boys to know that – to listen to their gut when it talks to them, especially when their head and their heart are uncertain.

Jo gave you the job on the spot. She liked you. I liked you, and I hadn’t even spoken to you – you hadn’t even seen me, sat in the corner behind my laptop, watching you and your son. You would start the following Monday – three days a week. I heard you say that your partner was a lighting technician, but he had just lost his job, so you were looking for something immediately to help tide you over. The flags were just getting redder and redder, the more you spoke to Jo and Pat, and I felt the butterflies in my belly flutter more quickly.

I wasn’t there the first day you started, but I asked Jo how it had gone that evening, in the WhatsApp group we had – the same one you’ve now been in for the past two years, and which, for the past few hours, you’ve been noticeably absent from. It’s a group the girls originally set up after I left David, and it was a lifeline for me. Megan, Jen and Jo became my soul sisters in the days and weeks after I left him, and I’m not sure I’d be here, writing this to you, without them. I hope when you wake up that same WhatsApp group can provide the same lifeline for you.

Jo replied saying you’d done really well and she liked you. Nothing else. Jen and Megan then said they’d both popped in that day for brunch and met you, and that you seemed lovely and sweet. No red flags raised by any of them, so I simmered down again. I reminded myself it could all be in my head. I prayed at that point that it was all in my head.

I remember the first time I knew my gut was right – that you were being abused. Your neighbours called the police after hearing Craig losing it, and he was arrested. You called Jo a few hours later, when you got home after leaving hospital. Jo rang me and I rushed straight to your house. I already knew it wasn’t the first time he’d been violent. You’d never told me, but the signs were there.

Woody was at home when the incident happened – Craig had stopped him going to nursery the month before he attacked you, to save money. It was just after lunchtime when I arrived. Two social workers were leaving as I came in: one young and straight-faced – I couldn’t work out if it was because she had no emotion or because she was trying to hold it together – and an older lady who smiled at me sweetly on her way out.

You were in shock. I knew the look as soon as I walked through the door and saw you. I could tell how you were feeling without you even speaking.

I can picture every detail of your injuries right now. You had dried blood at the front of your perfect middle parting. I could see the glue from where the hospital had seen to the wound. Your left eye was swollen – not closed over, but I knew it would soon be black. Your beautiful long fingernails were still intact, but had blood around them, where you’d eaten away the skin with the stress of it all.

Woody was awake, buried into you. You gripped his hand the whole time as you rocked back and forth with his whole body snuggled into your tiny frame, reassuring with words like ‘It’s OK, bud’ or ‘We’re fine now, baby, we’re gonna be just fine’. I felt the love instantly. I felt that mother’s protection, pouring from your entire being into him. Even though the purple bruising covered the limited amount of your skin that was on show, I could see you still had that fight within you. Instantly, I felt relieved that I was your friend. Although there was a sadness inside of me for you, there was also a deep-rooted knowledge that came to me of how life could look for you if I could get you the support and help that you needed and deserved. I knew I had to help build you and your baby back up, and let you see what your ever after was going to look like …

It doesn’t feel like that right now. It feels like somehow, I didn’t work hard enough back then. I feel like I took my eye off the ball. I thought you were coping better than you were. I keep feeling all the same feelings I had just over three years ago, when I was lying in that hospital bed, listening to all the machines beeping, the doors around me opening and closing, doctors and nurses rushing in and out. The bright white ceiling I spent days looking up at, wondering where it all went wrong, whilst I lay beneath it, covered in hundreds of injuries and scars – some years old – from a man I had once believed that I loved – like you did yours. A man who was also the father of my children …

We know you have no family, from the things you’ve told us. Your mum died when you were seventeen, something you and Jo have in common – although her adoptive mum had cancer and your mum died from alcohol poisoning. You never knew your dad, and you don’t have any family you were raised around, none that you know of – or that’s what you’ve always told us.

Mags has been told that Craig isn’t talking in custody – he went ‘no comment’ throughout his police interview, despite still having the brick in his hand, covered in your blood, when they arrived. And despite two independent witnesses giving statements as to what happened. One was an eleven-year-old girl, on her way to a dental appointment with her mum. He goes to court first thing tomorrow, but they’re hopeful he will be remanded in custody. I can’t help but think he should have got a harsher sentence than community service after the first attack, and then maybe we wouldn’t be here today, who knows?

We are worried that there might be friends and family from your past that we just don’t know about, but we can’t locate your mobile phone so we can’t check your contacts. Jo said your social media doesn’t have anyone other than people locally on it, so I genuinely don’t have anyone to contact to tell them about your situation. And that feels wrong, and so sad, given how incredible you are – I want the whole world to be up in arms. I want crowds in the street to come together and pray for you to get well. You deserve to feel love everywhere. I don’t understand how the only people you have supporting you are four women you’ve known for just twenty-four months.

I’ve thought a lot about what I needed when I woke up after David’s final attack on me years ago. If a domestic abuse survivor who had been through a similar ordeal as me had written parts of her story for me to read – to show me she could, and did, escape and become free and happy – I feel that would have not only occupied some of the longest, saddest, scariest days of my life, lying in that bed, but it would have also given me strength – to see I could do it too. That I could free myself of him forever, and my boys and I WOULD be OK.

And although we’ve spoken about my life with David, and some of the things that happened, I’ve decided to write you some of my story – which is so similar to yours in so many ways – so that when you do wake up, which I know you will, you’ll know you’re not alone.

You have to wake up, Martha, like I once did. Even if you open your eyes and feel devastated, you’re still alive, because the reality is just too much to deal with – the pressure of everyone knowing, the guilt, the shame and the blame – you have to, because you have an innocent little boy that needs you. He has no one else. There is no choice for women like us. Survival is the only way. It’s all we know.

I began journalling three years ago, after the attack. Jo encouraged me to. She was my best friend then, as she continues to be today, along with the rest of our girl gang – you included. It’s something her therapist encouraged her to do when she was at her worst, and it’s been as life changing for me as it was for her.

It was something I’d never even thought to do. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – because I would never have been able to write the truth whilst married to David, for fear of him finding it – and what was the point of journalling lies about being happy and having great memories? That wasn’t my life. It would have been pointless. Infuriating even.

So this letter to you is going to be my story – the story of me – your friend, Louise – much-loved daughter, mother of two incredible boys, domestic abuse survivor.



The beach, which you can see from my apartment, is bustling today, which is strange considering it’s May and the kids are still in school. It’s been this busy since I stepped back into my apartment this morning.

The sun feels angry; it’s been almost thirty degrees for the past three days. The heat is overwhelming – burning down from the sky and radiating up from the tarmac on the road. Most days I hate the high ceilings at home because of the cobwebs I can never reach, but today I’m thankful for them, for making me feel less claustrophobic, not as trapped – a little more free from spiders, their homes and all.

Sitting at my lounge window, I watch all the families sprawled across the miles of golden sand. Milo has spent the day skulking around, trying to find fresh pieces of cold wooden floorboards to lie on in shady corners of the flat. I walked him at 6 a.m., before I woke George for school, and I’ll take him out again after sunset. It’s too hot for him to go out in the daytime. It surprises me how many dogs I still see walking past my home – cockapoos like Milo, but so many other breeds, too – panting like mad and lying on the hot pavement every time their idiot owners stop to browse in another shop window. So m. . .