TERI HORTON WITH HER PAINTING
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A WOMAN BOUGHT A PAINTING THAT COULD BE WORTH $50 MILLION FOR $5. HOW DID SHE DO IT? One day a 73-year-old American called Teri Horton saw a large colourful painting in a California thrift shop*. She had never bought such a big painting before but she liked the colours and thought it would be a fun present for a friend who was depressed, so she bought it for $5. (The shop assistant had asked for $8 but Teri was good at bargaining.) After she had bought it, she took it to her friend’s house. The friend, however, didn’t like the painting, and anyway, they hadn’t managed to get it through the door and into her home, so Teri decided to sell it at a yard sale**. A local Art teacher saw it and thought it looked familiar. Had a famous artist painted it? Teri didn't know. Before she retired, she’d worked as a truck driver and she was no art expert. But she soon found out that the painting was in the style of a world-famous abstract artist who had died in 1956 and whose paintings sell for millions. Unfortunately, nobody had signed the painting and some experts claimed it wasn’t authentic. However, after an expert had found a fingerprint on the painting that seemed to be from a world famous abstract artist, a buyer offered her $9 million. She turned it down. She says she won’t sell it for less than $50 million. * In the US, a thrift shop is like a charity shop in the UK. ** In a yard sale, you sell some of your things in front of your house. It’s common in the US. |
is used to describe an action that happened before another action or event in the past. It emphasizes the idea that one action was completed or had already happened before another action took place.
- the past perfect tense is formed using the past tense of the auxiliary verb "to have" (had) followed by the past participle of the main verb.
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Example:
She had finished her homework before lunch.
By the time I arrived, the movie had already started.
She had never been to Aqaba before last summer.
I had not finished my homework before I went to bed.
She hadn’t seen that movie before last week.
Had she finished her work by the time the meeting started?
Had they ever traveled abroad before that trip?
