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

“Them Muzzies have ruined this country!” Tony shouted. “They come over here in the fucking millions and want us all to eat halal and let them have Sharia law and have the birds in burkhas—they’re terrorists, fucking invaders, and he’s—”


“That is so stupid I don’t even know where to start!” Ali exploded. “Yazid’s not a terrorist, his brother’s not a terrorist, his parents weren’t terrorists. For God’s sake, I’ve met his sister-in-law—who wears a hijab, if you must know—and she’s lovely, much nicer than you are!”


A nurse with a face like the back end of a bus had materialized in the bay entrance, fists the size of packing crates on hips nearly as wide as the doorframe. If she had been remotely soft or wobbly, she might have been called fat—instead, Ali was reminded of the bouncers at Yazid’s old pub in Leeds.


Chapter 34