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

“I don’t remember what she said, I was busy being sick. She left a message on the answer-machine. I think, anyway. I heard her talking, I don’t think she actually came over.”


“Okay,” Ali said, and shrugged it off. She could wait. He wasn’t thinking about it all right now. Not her, not Jo, not Tony, not any of it. He wasn’t ready to think about it. “How was last night?”


“Awesome,” Yazid said, lifting his feet so Ali could sweep under them. “Kevin got arrested, Chris broke his nose and nobody knows how, and Scott texted me this afternoon saying he woke up in bed with a stripper wearing my harem pants.”


“The stripper was wearing them, or Scott was?”


“Very fetching,” Ali opined. “I’m surprised you didn’t get arrested, wandering home in your underwear.”


“So’m I. Glad I took the weekend off, mind, I feel fucking awful.”


“Oh, thanks,” Yazid said, grimacing. “I’m not a beautiful princess anymore?”


Chapter 61