Lady Rice broods on alimony. Lady Rice will not really be deflected by Angel as a source of entertainment, though she appreciates the usages of sex. Lady Rice still wants her pound of flesh, but is grateful to Angel for trying.
To do without unhappiness, Lady Rice explains to her sub-sisters, would be to do without the nourishment she has come to expect. These days she relies on the bread of outrage, well spiced by bitter gall rising to the throat. It is bread buttered and slavered with hatred of Anthea. Unholy, unhealthy emotions all, but satisfactory: knife between the teeth of the embattled warrior; an unchancy weapon, metal against ivory, sharp edge turned outward, but, of course, if you fall, that’s what disembowels you: your own enmity, forget the enemy. Hate, like sex, is an addiction, explains Lady Rice: you feel you can live on it for ever; that you’re born one fix of hatred under par; but of course all the time it’s enticing you, luring you, killing you. And it can kill you quick, if you overdose, as heroin does: you can choke pretty fast on your own bile. It’s the opposite of a quiet death – it’s death by intemperance, spite, righteous anger, the nausea of revulsion. Or else it can kill you slowly; you can retreat howling, as Jelly did in the Volvo, parking in a concrete stall, leaving the field to others, licking obviously fatal wounds, a savage beast holed up in a rancid cave, pitiful but dangerous. If anyone demonstrates kindness, Lady Rice sneers, she who once gave such nice dinner parties; if anyone goes near, the creature will repay that kindness, that approach, by tearing the innocent to bits in its death throes. Beware the howling of the injured. Angel, don’t feel too safe in the body you think you control. You may be out of your depth. Jelly does nothing to annoy; Angelica is almost a friend; but Angel has left Lady Rice with her knicker elastic snapped and Lady Rice may not like it; let Angel not rely on the gratitude of Lady Rice, divorcee-in-waiting.