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

But they were still there, and the hard expression on Tony’s face said they were as true as they had ever been. Forever Englandon the left side of his neck, C18on the other side. The intricate, heavy sleeve of ink and skulls snaking down his right arm, ending in a swastika on a banner on the back of his hand. And without a trace of irony, the letters L-O-V-E tattooed over the knuckles.


Just the sight of him made Ali feel sick, and then that lean, hard face twisted into a sneer, those sharp blue eyes sliding away from Ali and staring at the epitome of everything Tony hated. An Islamic, dark-skinned, foreign-born homosexual.


The sneer twisted and showed yellowed teeth, blunted and broken. That whispery, harsh voice that had been the source of Ali’s dread as a child, and his nightmares as an adult, bled into the room like a gangrenous wound oozing pus.


“Get that fucking Paki out of my sight,” Tony snarled.


“Anthony!” Violet snapped from the visitor’s chair.


Chapter 12