The Girl in Times Square. Paullina Simons

      PAULLINA SIMONS

      THE GIRL IN TIMES SQUARE

Copyright

       Harper

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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       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

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

Epigraph

       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

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Past as Prologue

Just Before the Beginning

Lily Quinn

Allison Quinn

A Man and a Woman

Part I. In the Beginning

1. Appearing To Be One Thing When it is in Fact Another

2. Hawaii

3. An Hour at the 9th Precinct

4. Wallets on Dressers

5. Spencer Patrick O’Malley

6. Conversations with Mothers

7. Birds of Paradise

8. The Disadvantages of Walking to Work

9. Ignorance in Amy’s Bed

10. Things in the Closet

11. Spencer Patrick O’Malley and Lilianne Quinn

12. A Little Rented Honda

13. Lily and the City of Dreams

14. Riding Shotgun

15. Spencer’s Twelve Tickets

16. Reality: The Actual Thing that it Appears to Be

       Part II. The Middle of the Road