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

“It’s like being married!” he complained, and caught another flying pair of jeans.


It kinda was like being married lately, Yazid reflected as he was pestered, poked, and prodded toward the changing cubicles. Ever since the row with his brother at the baby’s christening (or whatever it had been, Yazid still wasn’t sure) Ali had been…kind of…


Almost moving in. Not so much to Yazid’s flat—although there were a suspicious amount of socks lying around that Yazid was sure didn’t belong to him—but into his life. He was shopping for Yazid, and he came over unannounced more often, and Yazid had been practically collected from work the other day, only to find no date forthcoming. They’d lounged on Ali’s sofa and eaten bad Chinese takeaway and mocked cartoons together.


They were easing out of dating and into something…weirdly settled.


Chapter 33