Shortly after my thirtieth birthday back in 2013, I went through a crisis of sorts.

As much as I considered myself to be an independent free-thinker, determined not to follow the path of my older sister Devi who’d married her university sweetheart, Nikhil, and had settled five minutes away from our parents in Kent, I wasn’t immune to the world story of What A Woman Should Have Achieved By 30. ‘World stories’ was my term for certain narratives spun over and over again until they become self-fulfilling and inescapable because the joists of them are nailed down into books, TV shows and films. They become part of the small talk you engage in with taxi drivers or at the supermarket (‘I don’t think I’ve seen a sadder sight than a woman buying herself flowers’) and of interactions at weddings and family gatherings. (‘When is it going to be your turn?’)

I’m not saying men aren’t pressured around marriage and kids, but as I explained to my friend Anthony, who was wigging out after his fiancée broke up with him, we aren’t on an even playing field. While men may be judged more harshly if they don’t attain economic success, the same is true for a woman around domestic success no matter how much she has achieved in her career. We weren’t even allowed to have our own mortgages or credit cards until the 1970s, I told him. (And possibly shouldn’t have said any of this so soon after the break-up that the Save the Date announcement was still stuck to his fridge.) World stories might make cute rom-coms but they are not conducive to aiding life decisions. Think about the number of people who settled for an ill-suited partner because turning thirty and being single is a frightening prospect, a superhighway to dying alone.

After I hit thirty, try as I might, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be building something more permanent in my personal life. Work was fine but it was hardly dazzling. I focussed that wild excess of energy into my love life and tried online dating. This was in the pre-dating-apps era when you had to use a laptop to go onto Match.com and pray that a serial killer didn’t lurk behind the GSOH and ‘likes to travel’.

A few mediocre dates later, I met Gregor Jamieson in a large, airy pub in the banking district, an area I hated because the atmosphere was soul-less and everyone dressed like sad storm clouds. Although his deep voice and Scottish accent conveyed strength of character and confidence, I could tell he was nervous from the way he tugged at his sleeves and the pearling of sweat above his upper lip. One date turned into two, then three, which led to that comfortable, easy moment on the sofa where it was just the two of us being restful in each other’s company. Fetching a glass of water for the other, unbidden. Homemade dinners slowly forming a collection of favourite meals used as a balm of kindness and care when the other was having a bad day. The sex was not the best and my mind would drift off at times, wondering, What time does Homebase open? And, Did I send that email to HR or is it in drafts? But the intimacy of finding home within another person was wonderful. I felt less alone, not just because I was in a couple, but because there was someone who cared about me, made me feel safe, into whom I could pour my worries and needs and find words of comfort or the physicality of an embrace throughout it all. When my mother asked me how dating was going, I felt good because I had an answer.

In Case Of Emergency by Poorna Bell: read an exclusive extract from the novel