A former lover of a woman accused of stabbing a teenage boy told a jury how her ex-friend carried a knife.

Sally Stanley, a married mother-of-two, said Lorraine Large hid the kitchen knife in Large's child's pushchair.

Large, 22, of Foxes Crofts, Barnham, and Gemma McGarvie, 18, of South Terrace, Littlehampton, both deny the attempted murder of the boy and maliciously wounding him with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

The court heard the teenager vomited after drinking strong cider and narrowly avoided falling over Large's baby son during a party at McGarvie's flat in December last year.

The prosecution claim the lesbian couple took the boy outside and attacked him, leaving him for dead on a seafront green. He had been stabbed 23 times.

Mrs Stanley, from Littlehampton, was giving evidence at the start of the second week of the trial at Lewes Crown Court yesterday.

She told the jury she and her husband had been lovers with Large.

They had lost contact but later met up with Large and a female friend. Shortly afterwards a series of late-night phone calls were made to her home.

She said at first the calls were silent but they started to become threatening.

She said: "There were threats to hurt me, my children and my husband. There were threats to stab."

Mrs Stanley said Large and her friend had followed her around Littlehampton town centre when she was shopping with her children.

Eventually, she went to the police and took out a county court injunction ordering the two women to stop phoning her.

Mrs Stanley said Large carried a chef's knife around. It was part of a set she had when she was a catering student in Chichester in 1997.

She said Large threatened people on "numerous" occasions.

She said: "She was very, very aggressive to people. She would start shouting and threatening them in the street."

The jury earlier heard how both Large and McGarvie had blamed each other after their arrest for causing the boy's horrific injuries.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in his neck, arms, torso and legs. He is scarred.

The trial continues.