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

“I should be able to bring my boyfriend to meet my new nephew and not have my brother calling him a…a…”


“Look,” Yazid interrupted as Ali struggled to even say the word. “Forget about him. He doesn’t know who I am, as far as he knows he’s never met me, and I really don’t care what a prick like him thinks of me. Okay? Just forget about it, let’s watch a film, and make the most of the fact it’s disgusting out so neither of us has to go anywhere.”


Ali huffed and twisted over to rest his chin on Yazid’s chest. His face was more relaxed than when he’d come in, and Yazid draped his arms around that lean back. “I know eventually he’ll find out who you are,” Ali whispered, “but he’s…he’ll hurt you. I know he will.”


“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Yazid murmured, still toying with Ali’s hair. It never failed to fascinate him. He had always imagined fair hair to be somehow silkier and softer, but Ali’s was thick and coarse.


Chapter 30