Mornings with the Crossword

My partner and I do the Sunday crossword together in bed, one pen between us, which causes about four arguments per puzzle.

She's brilliant at wordplay. I know a strange amount about rivers and 1970s sitcoms. Together we're almost one competent puzzler. We've been doing it for nine years, since our first apartment, where the bed was also the couch, the desk and the dining table.

Some Sundays we finish. Some Sundays we give up at noon and look at the answers, groaning. Either way, there's coffee, and the dog snoring between us, and the light coming through the blinds in stripes across the newspaper.

When people ask what our secret is, I want to say "seventeen across." It's the time, really. The same small hour every week, side by side, that belongs to no one but us.