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

He had—he had time to think about it.22ndAugust 2009


Yazid was disturbed from his evening—and the hysterical argument between mother and daughter on the soap—by the entrance buzzer. He groaned, heaving himself off the sofa. It had been a lazy day inside, thanks to the thunderstorm and a power cut at work that hadn’t yet resolved itself. It was still lashing it down now.


“Yo,” he said into the receiver, expecting his neighbour from across the hall to have locked himself out again.


“Hey,” said a distinctly beggar-my-neighbour voice instead. “Can I come up?”


“Sure,” Yazid said, depressing the button on autopilot. He found himself frowning already though, and unhooked the chain across the door to open it. Ali—supposedly—wasn’t around this weekend at all. “What happened?” he called as a shadowy figure jogged up the stairs and through the cracked glass door.


Chapter 29