CAPPUCCINO. THAT NEW AGE answer to driving one’s blues momentarily away. A few tablespoons of espresso, a froth of steamed milk, an accompanying and generally tasteless dash of powdered chocolate and suddenly life was supposed to be all in order again. What drivel.

Deborah St. James sighed. She picked up the bill that a passing waitress had slid surreptitiously onto the table.

“Good Lord,” she said and she stared, both dismayed and disgusted, at the amount she was going to have to pay. A block away, she could have ducked into a pub and acknowledged that importunate inner voice saying, “What’s this chi-chi rot, Deb, let’s just have a Guinness somewhere.” But instead, she’d made her way to Upstairs, the stylish marbleglass-and-chrome coffee shop of the Savoy Hotel where those who imbibed in anything beyond water paid heavily for the privilege. As she was discovering.

She’d come to the Savoy to show her portfolio to Richie Rica, an up-and-coming producer employed by a newly formed entertainment conglomerate called L.A.SoundMachine. He had travelled to London for a brief seven days to select the photographer who would capture for posterity the likenesses of Dead Meat, a five-member band from Leeds whose most recent album Rica was shepherding all the way from creation to completion. She was, he told her, the “ninth frigging photog” whose work he’d seen. His patience, apparently, was wearing thin.

Unfortunately, it gained no girth from their interview. Straddling a delicate gilded chair, Rica went through her portfolio with all the interest and the approximate speed of a man dealing cards in a gambling casino. One after another, Deborah’s pictures sailed to the fl oor. She watched them fall: her husband, her father, her sister-in-law, her friends, the myriad relations she’d gained through her marriage. There was no Sting or Bowie or George Michael among them. She’d only got the interview in the first place through the recommendation of a fellow photographer whose work had also failed to please the American. And from the expression on Rica’s face, she could tell she was getting no further than anyone else.