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

He dropped his throat into the harsher, deeper sounds of his half-forgotten mother tongue, and spoke with the solemn reverence he’d been taught since birth. “Allahu akbar,”he intoned gravely, staring Tony right in the eyes.


Tony, his ignorance playing right into Yazid’s hands, blanched and took a step back.


“Merry Christmas,” Ali snarled, and turned on his heel.


Yazid dropped his hands, nodded to Violet, and followed, lunging at the end of the driveway to catch Ali’s hand.


“Hey, whoa,” Yazid said, holding up his hands.


“Fuck. I’m so sorry,” he whispered.


Yazid was startled when he opened his eyes and the blue was glazed with tears. “I’m so sorry, Mum promised he wasn’t coming until this evening, I swore you wouldn’t have to deal with him, and—”


“And, hey, I got to cuddle your new nephew and your sister might have thawed a tiny bit towards me,” Yazid said. “And I got to scare your brother, you see the colour he went?”


Chapter 59