FLASH FICTION:WE WAKE IN an unfamiliar room to the sound of a crying child. It's intermittent, this sound. It swells for a second or two and then stops, as if cut off. I lie there, listening, holding my breath. Babies don't suffer like we do, I tell myself. Their pain lacks a narrative thread.

I try to imagine him, in these silent seconds, gazing up at the luminous stars on the ceiling, peering at the furred outline of the bear at the foot of his cot, examining the pale apparition of his thumb. Then the crying resumes.

“Go, will you?” Sarah murmurs. “He’s your nephew.”

I fling back the cover, roll on to my knees and lift the blind. “The car’s in the drive,” I say.

“It’s been there all night,” says Sarah. “They took a cab.”

I study the glimmer of greying sky above the rooftops. The streetlamps are ember-red. “It’s nearly morning,” I say. “They must be home by now.”

“Then they’re drunk,” Sarah says. “Nothing’s going to wake them.”

I lie down again. The crying grows louder, higher, the silences more intense. The baby is learning to dramatise.

Sarah rolls towards me. I can feel her eyes on me, prising me apart. “Do you seriously want me to go?” she says. Her voice is rasping and fragile.

I stare at the stippled ceiling. My stomach is a clenched fist. I shouldn’t have made her come, I know that. But I couldn’t face it on my own. It’s my sister’s fault, I tell myself. She never should have asked.

“For Christ’s sake,” says Sarah. She kicks a leg out of bed then stops, her head a few inches from the pillow, her hair still stroking the sheets. I can make out the knots of her spine through her T-shirt. For a moment she holds herself still, then she gives a little shudder and sinks back. She rolls onto her stomach and clamps the pillow over her head.

The crying turns into a wail. Tremulous, unbroken, and terribly alive.

I gaze at the sliver of light flatlining underneath the blind. My sister will go to him, I think. Any minute now.

Flash fiction will be a regular item in The Irish Times. E-mail a story of no more than 500 words to flashfiction@irishtimes.com