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 is,” he said quietly. “You’ll support Tony when he’s sent to prison for grievous bodily harm, but you won’t support me when my boyfriend’s got cancer. You even supported Dad when he was ill, and you hated Dad after the divorce, but me and Yaz…we’re different.”


She hardly ever used his nickname—his real name, as he’d thought of it ever since Yazid came along with his apparent allergy to any word longer than two syllables.


“I would donate for a stranger, Mum, but asking me to donate for someone who’s bullied me since I was thirteen, beat up my first crush for turning me queer, and then nearly killed my boyfriend…it’s not that easy,” Ali hissed. “He hates me, Mum, and over the last few years, I’m getting pretty close to that point myself.”


“Alasdair, darling, your brother doesn’t hate you.”


“He hates what I am,” Ali insisted. “Ever since I came out, he’s looked at me like I’m some kind of diseased freak, and then the first time he met Yazid…”


Chapter 50