A woman accused of trying to kill her husband said he came at her with a knife, a court heard.

Dena Thompson said in a police statement read out at Hove Crown Court the fight started after an argument about money.

She said he wanted to go to America the next day to go fishing but she told him they had spent all their money on doing up the house.

She said he was furious they could not go as he had told his friends he would be fishing on his birthday, January 4.

Thompson, 40, denies attempting to murder her husband at the couple's home in Rustington on January 2.

It is alleged she attacked Richard Thompson, 42, with a metal baseball bat while he was bound with a belt and masking tape expecting to take part in bondage sex.

The jury heard in her statement that she ran them a bath and he was trying to fix a roller blind in the bathroom with a knife.

She said she sat on their bed in her knickers.

The court heard the argument flared up and he came at her with a 12in kitchen knife.

She grabbed a baseball bat and hit him around his head. He stepped backwards but then came at her again with the knife and she hit him again.

He grabbed the bat and threw it into the kitchen. He got on top of her and had his thumb pushing into her left eye. She said: "I thought he was going to kill me. I saw the knife on the right hand side. I picked it up, brought it across and cut his right arm, then threw the knife under the bed.

"He brought his fist up as though he was going to smash my face in, as though he was going to kill me."

She spoke and that seemed to calm him down and he told her to clean up the blood on the bedroom carpet and in the bathroom.

She offered to call an ambulance but he asked her to call her parents.

Three hours later they arrived with her son and her father took her husband to hospital.

She packed some clothes for herself and her son and, together with her mother, stayed at Rustington Travel Lodge.

The case continues.