Narrative Tenses: Future-in-the-Past (Would / Was Going To / Was About To) (C1)

That single decision taken late one Friday evening in 1985 the company in directions no one in the boardroom could have predicted at the time. (transform)

We on the early Monday flight, but the airline cancelled the whole Brussels route the previous Thursday. (fly)

I the candles on the cake when the doorbell rang downstairs and ruined the surprise. (light)

The shy first-year apprentice in the engine room chief engineer of the entire fleet some twenty years later. (become)

She him over the weekend with the bad news, but he flew to Tokyo before she could pluck up the courage. (call)

Just as the chair the entire meeting, the IT team finally got the projector working again at the very back of the room. (postpone)

The two postdocs squabbling over the bench in 1998 the Nobel Prize jointly nearly a decade later. (share)

They a small registry-office ceremony with just two witnesses, but his grandmother insisted on a full church service. (have)

He his keys into the front-door lock when his phone buzzed urgently with the news in his coat pocket. (put)

Within six short months, that little group of friends meeting in a Lisbon kitchen a movement that drew international attention. (start)

We them in early August, but Maria's phone call the night before made it clear they were leaving for Singapore the very next morning. (visit)

She asleep when the duty nurse rang to query the dosage on the new prescription. (fall)

Those rough, smudged sketches in his student notebook the basis of nearly every major painting he produced in his later career. (form)

He completely honest with her at dinner that evening, but he lost his nerve the moment the waiter brought out the dessert menu. (be)

The unassuming little café on the corner of Rue du Bac the social heart of the neighbourhood for the next four decades. (be)