4 Across: Certainly something you'd read (3)

From "The Mind Will Always Find Something To Do"

         This is how I proposed to my late wife.
         On the morning of our second anniversary I woke early. I slipped from beneath the covers, leaving her to sleep, and ran out to the newsagents to get the morning's paper. Standing by the counter, still in my pyjamas and slippers, I unfolded a copy and turned it over. There, on the back page, was my puzzle.
         I rushed back to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Eggs Benedict on toasted muffins with freshly made Hollandaise sauce; hot, ground coffee; hand-squeezed orange juice and a small bowl of plump, juicy strawberries, stalked and cut into halves.
         I filled in a few of the clues myself, and then folded the paper back up in such a way that my puzzle was left facing up and wedged it under the plate on the breakfast tray.
         She stirred as I entered the room. I told her to relax, that I was bringing her breakfast in bed. I placed the tray down beside her and she sat up dozily as I went to open the curtains. It was a beautiful spring morning, I remember. The ground outside was speckled with dew and the sun shone bright in the clear blue sky making each drop sparkle white.
         While my back was turned I could hear her rearranging the items on the tray. The paper had been momentarily pushed to the side, but I knew that she would pick it up again. She always read the headlines as she had breakfast.
         That day though, the day I proposed to my late wife, she didn't even make it to the front page. As she shook the paper open, with the back page facing her, she was confused to see that someone had already filled in a few of the answers on the crossword grid.
         She opened her mouth to speak - to ask me what had happened to the paper, I imagine - but stopped when she realised what the words spelled out.

         YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE

         Were she in the frame of mind to pore over the puzzle sat in front of her then she would have noticed that the words written were indeed the correct answers to the spaces' corresponding clues.
         8 Down: Collectively: carpals, metacarpals, phalanges (4);
         23 Across: A grim era? Surely confused (8) and so on.
         Initially I had wanted to go for the more traditional WILL, YOU, MARRY, ME but my editor had insisted that I not use any two lettered answers. He was happy for me to use the puzzle to propose - I had been a regular contributor for years, and he was always glad to have a light-hearted, quirky puzzle to end the week - only so long as I didn’t use any two lettered answers. Not only did he feel that they make a grid look too stumpy but, in all of his twelve years as puzzle editor for The Telegraph, he had never allowed a two lettered answer to be used. Even in this case, he wasn't prepared to make an exception.
         He was right not to, of course. After all, if not for the rules, what is a crossword but just a mess of letters?
         Had I resorted to using a two lettered answer, not only would there doubtless have been letters from irked readers, but I also would have felt as if I'd cheated in compiling the puzzle - something I have never knowingly done in my entire career. So it forced me into thinking of a different proposal.
         By using YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE I was able to lock the two lettered IN on to HAND by the D to give the clue for 13 Across: Sounds like a trashcan being hammered (3) - which, while it may not be not my finest or my cleverest clue, got me out of that particular fix.
         Now, in hindsight, I think I prefer that it was YOUR, HAND, IN, MARRIAGE, PLEASE. It sounds like it could be a clue itself. I can imagine people - commuters, housewives, university professors - completing the crossword that day and half making out the words of this slightly cryptic message for themselves. They will wonder if it is merely coincidence that these words have appeared before their eyes, or if perhaps that this was a message meant for someone.
         A couple of days later as they wait for a train, or as they are cooking their supper, they will think about it again. They will think about that strange message and they will wonder if the person it was meant for ever got to see it, if the person that wrote it ever got their answer.

         I smiled back at her, nodding my head towards the paper. She looked again at the grid again and saw the circled clue.
         26 Across: What do you say? (3)
         She looked back at me, blinked and then looked at the grid one final time before, slowly, picking up the biro.
         Her hand shaking, she filled in her answer.
         Y-E-S.