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’d been a good brother once, right up until Ali was thirteen, and the change had hurt.


“Well, I’ll hate him for you, yeah?”


Ali laughed wetly. “Yeah, okay,” he croaked. “If I hated him, I wouldn’t even think about doing this. It’s just…Mum, and…and…”


Yazid kissed the top of Ali’s head. “If you were a little more selfish, then it’d be an easy choice, but you’ve spent years taking on other people’s guilt and problems. You still twitch when other people call me names, you still apologize for Tony being a racist, you still act like you personally have butchered someone if you miss a blood donation session. If you’d learn how to be a bit more of a bastard, it’d be easy.”


Ali laughed again, some of the tight pain easing. He unwound himself to push a kiss into Yazid’s cheek.


“You’re a saint,” Yazid said, “and it can be pretty fucking impossible for saints to make the quick decisions us mere mortals can.”


Chapter 98