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

The man grabbed Ali’s shoulder. Yazid opened his mouth, but shut it again when Ali scowled, shook the heavy paw off, and said, “What the fuck do you want, Tone?”


Yazid put it together in a matter of seconds. The physical similarity—wiry build, ice-blue eyes, diamond-cutting cheekbones, the nickname, the dark smear of tattoos running down one arm, and the aggressive, rock-hard stance. Tony Barraclough. The brother he wasn’t supposed to meet.


“I went up to visit Mum this morning,” Tony said, in a voice loud enough that the entire pub could hear him. A couple of lads at the pool table glanced over with matching frowns. The woman Yazid was serving looked a little nervous. “And she said you’d been by lately with some new screw.”


“It’s none of your fucking business, now sod off,” Ali said coldly, turning back to the bar.


Tony seized his shoulder again, and Ali shook him off.


“She said you brought some fucking Paki into her house!”


Chapter 18