There are two very different tales of what led to a heavily pregnant woman stabbing her former husband in the neck in a unit in an affluent harbourside suburb on Sydney's lower north shore.
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On one telling, the woman asked her ex-husband to cover his eyes with a tea towel when he came to collect their son before, unprovoked, she stabbed him three times and said he would never take their child.
But on another, the woman, unable to see without her glasses, accidentally repeatedly stabbed her ex-husband after he punched her in the face. She had been making cheese and avocado sandwiches and picked up a nearby knife out of panic and was waving it front of her when she inadvertently struck him in the neck, collarbone and chin.
It will up to a Sydney jury to determine what unfolded in the Neutral Bay apartment in September 2015.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is on trial in the NSW District Court charged with one count of wounding with intent to murder.
In his opening address on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Glen Porter said the jury would hear evidence that the woman stabbed her ex-husband when he arrived to pick up their four-year-old son as per a custody agreement.
The court heard that the woman told her ex-husband to cover his eyes because their son had a "surprise" for him before she placed a tea towel over his face.
"[He] felt the sensation of a warm liquid flowing down his chin area ... He saw the accused holding a knife about head high," Mr Porter said.
With blood gushing from his wounds and unable to swipe his iPhone open, the man stumbled towards the front door and yelled for help. The woman, the court heard, continued to follow him with the knife screaming "you'll never take [him] from me."
But the woman's barrister, John Korn???, told the jury the man had made up a story that was "nothing short of ludicrous".
"[His] version is nothing more than a concoction. His carefully constructed facade went out the window the moment he punched a six-month pregnant woman in the face and he knew that he was in trouble," Mr Korn said.
"Being the careful man that he is, he quickly went into damage mode."
Mr Korn said the jury would hear evidence that the man was controlling and manipulative. After the pair split up, he organised for investigators to follow the woman and for a family member fraudulently to obtain her medical records and track her on Facebook.
The day before the stabbing, the court heard, the man had asked to take his son for Father's Day but the woman told him the boy was jet-lagged from a recent flight.
When the man arrived the next day, the court heard, he flew into a rage and punched her in the face. Mr Korn said the woman's glasses fell off and, unable to see, she picked up a knife from the kitchen bench and started waving it in front of her.
"She didn't even know that she had made contact with him," Mr Korn said.
"He attacked her and she did what she felt at the time in circumstances of panic and in circumstances where she couldn't see what is front of her."
The court heard that paramedics detected two golf ball-sized lumps on her forehead and a swollen cheek.
The man is expected to claim that the woman caused the injuries to herself after he called an ambulance.
"He will no doubt come before you with a completely falsely constructed facade as to who he is," Mr Korn said.
The trial will continue on Monday.
