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

“Gonna be fucking feminine without you, mate,” Lee said, clacking their glasses together messily. “Won’t be no blokes left!”


“Yazid doesn’t count as a bloke,” Lizzy argued. “He’s a pouf!”


“More bloke than any of you tarts,” Lee snorted.


“Definitely all bloke,” Ali said. “When you’re not being a princess,” he added snidely.


Yazid laughed, dropping an arm around Ali faux-casually.


“Princess Yazida, that’s me,” he agreed, to Lee’s good-natured ribbing and Lizzy’s alarmingly high giggle. “Lizzy, he just means nobody to discuss the football with without having to compete for you girls.”


“Sorry, Lee, you just ain’t my type,” Lizzy said, and waggled her fingers in front of her chest with a leery grin. “You just ain’t got the knockers!”


“Neither have you, you flat-chested tart!” Lee retorted.


Chapter 72