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

And then he flung the phone across the room. It smashed against the opposite wall; Moxie yowled and fled, her paws thundering up the stairs and into their bedroom, and Ali wanted—desperately—to cry all of a sudden. They didn’t get it, none of them fucking got it. They kept talking about family but really what they meant was them—because Yazid was family. He was more family than they had been for years. Jo had fucking defended Tony in court; Mum wished she had two straight sons and didn’t bat an eyelid at what her eldest was actually like, and—


Ali fought to keep the tears back. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who’d just let another human being die, but he couldn’t face the possibility that, if he saved Tony…


Chapter 56