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

For Yazid. And that simple fact made it seem okay. Made Ali wriggle closer and drape an arm over Yazid’s waist, exhaling heavily across his collarbone and feeling the shift and grumble of a reply.


“Okay,” Ali whispered, and kissed the nearest bit of available skin. “We’ll get the green one.” Whatever it was. “Whatever you want.”


Yazid mumbled something completely unintelligible then—so unclear Ali couldn’t tell if it was English or not—and quieted again. Ali closed his eyes, and relaxed into the gentle rise and fall of Yazid’s chest.


As of the day after that, he’d just have to make his own one, right?6thApril 2011


“He’d just have to make his own one, right?”


Yazid had the TV on, but he wasn’t listening to it. Because the letters had started arriving


Chapter 96