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

“Got it, gorgeous!” he bellowed. “Love you!”


Then the door slammed, and Ali folded his arms around himself, eyes closed and drinking in that raucous love you!until the very letters in it were perfectly memorized.


Then he slid out his own pre-packed bag from under the kitchen table, and headed out.


He had—after several years and countless nightmares—a question to ask, an answer to hear, and a demon to face.


It was raining in Leeds when Ali arrived, and the bus from the train station was grimy and crowded. The air-conditioning of the main entrance to the hospital was a welcome relief, but the lifts were still coffins of memories Ali desperately wanted to lay to rest.


The last time he’d come to the hospital on his own, it had been the morning after Yazid had collapsed in their kitchen. He’d been taken into intensive care for a week, his body struggling with the lethal combination of cancer and chemo, and for a while—


Chapter 32