The Girl in Times Square

The Girl in Times Square
Paullina Simons

A stunning and powerful contemporary love story from one of the best storytellers this century. What if everything you believed about your life was a lie?Meet Lily Quinn. She is broke, struggling to finish college, pay her rent, find love. Adrift in bustling New York City, the most interesting things in Lily’s life happen to the people around her. But Lily loves her aimless life … until her best friend and roommate Amy disappears. That’s when Spencer Patrick O’Malley, a cynical, past his prime NYPD detective with demons of his own, enters Lily’s world. And a sudden financial windfall which should bring Lily joy instead becomes an ominous portent of the dark forces gathering around her.But fate isn’t finished with Lily.She finds herself fighting for her life as Spencer’s search for the missing Amy intensifies, leading Lily to question everything she knew about her friend and family. Startling revelations about the people she loves force her to confront truths that will leave her changed forever.From a master storyteller comes a heart-wrenching, magnificent and unputdownable novel.This is the odyssey of two young women, Lily and Amy, roommates and friends on the verge of the rest of their lives.

PAULLINA SIMONS

THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE

Copyright (#ulink_2f588342-4380-5e63-b05d-d035ac86c1ab)

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005

Copyright © Paullina Simons 2004

“Lost in the Flood” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1972

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

“Fire” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1978

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved.

“Across the Border” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1995

Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved.

Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007118939

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007383979

Version: 2018-05-24

Dedication (#ulink_80c021b9-57d8-59b3-92a4-44cdbd453e62)

For my sister, Elizabeth, as ever searching And for Melanie Cain, who has been to the crying room

Epigraph (#ulink_d2edec10-645d-510f-9ed1-521cca2aaf13)

In the Vatican after they have chosen a new pope, they lead him to a room off the Sistine Chapel where he is given the clothing of a pope. It is called the Crying Room. It is called that because it is there that the burdens and responsibilities of the papacy tend to come crashing down on the new pontiff. Many of them have wept. The best have wept.

PEGGY NOONAN

Contents

Cover (#u2fbb36c5-caff-5747-aa9e-068c91dd28eb)

Title Page (#u72a465a6-143c-58d2-994e-24727400ba11)

Copyright (#ulink_86d703fa-31d5-5693-b4a2-b982c87bff87)

Dedication (#ulink_75dd8694-2278-5195-8dec-d2507d84d1e4)

Epigraph (#ulink_fab94f46-f0fe-5d74-97fb-e721e2cf0863)

The Past as Prologue (#ulink_08485193-da2f-53dc-b58a-6786b5491450)

Just Before the Beginning

Lily Quinn (#ulink_bab109e6-7193-53c2-8f98-1951527c1303)

Allison Quinn (#ulink_96f4dc6e-0309-56c9-b1f4-b924bdc1339f)

A Man and a Woman (#ulink_d3ad7ac7-04bc-5604-a0bd-49a723eea1df)

Part I. In the Beginning (#ulink_c542fb0e-ebf1-5c67-8bee-fea06f785878)

1. Appearing To Be One Thing When it is in Fact Another (#ulink_9e0cd9bf-3c21-51b9-ae10-733b6aebdbd7)

2. Hawaii (#ulink_8f2089ef-092d-5cd6-88ff-a7698cb7c593)

3. An Hour at the 9th Precinct (#ulink_47717268-dc64-58c5-bf8d-be2fb8d6d594)

4. Wallets on Dressers (#ulink_5e20b23c-b00c-5d75-b7e9-50d430658cd1)

5. Spencer Patrick O’Malley (#ulink_e2f30285-a5fc-5052-b9ca-0a7b507497af)

6. Conversations with Mothers (#ulink_4c328652-6208-52f7-9933-9162be1d8ad4)

7. Birds of Paradise (#ulink_8362f3c4-ce64-5e81-944f-f88afbf31d2c)