If you could save someone's life, would you? Anyone's? Ali's older brother has a swastika tattooed on his knuckles, a prison ID number for nearly beating an immigrant to death, and spent his teenage years ruthlessly persecuting Ali for being gay. Blood may be thicker than water, but Ali has spent most of his life desperate to prove he is nothing like Tony. A committed vegetarian, charity-supporter, and blood donor, Ali would do anything for anyone. Ali may share parentage with Tony, but he’s determined not to share anything else if he can help it. So when Tony contracts leukaemia, and Ali is the only match for the urgently-needed bone marrow transplant, Ali is caught between two equally awful choices: to refuse and condemn a man to death, or to donate. And in donating, save the life of the man who nearly murdered Ali's Iraqi boyfriend?

Thicker Than Bone

Ali’s fingers clenched in Yazid’s sleeve, but Yazid very resolutely did not look at him.


He could feel his heart beating in his throat.


Yazid carefully made sure his face didn’t react to the drawled vowel. She almost made three syllables of his name.


“Lovely…lovely to meet you, dear.”


Yazid summoned an awkward smile. For a half-beat, a silence rolled in before Ali cleared his throat and his mother jumped.


“Yes,” she said, as if answering a question. “Come in, both of you. Tea?”


“Thanks, Mum,” Ali said. “Milk and two sugars for Yaz, he’s got a sweet tooth.”


Mrs Archer said nothing to that, disappearing like a ghost. Yazid exhaled shakily as Ali shut the front door. The hall was thickly-carpeted and homely, pictures on the wall of a pretty blonde woman’s wedding, and Mrs Archer with a giggling toddler in some anonymous photography studio.


Chapter 9