Let’s consider the conversation above. Why did the first speaker ask, “And what happened next?”
This is a very common situation, where people are not sure about tenses and use them wrongly.
However, by using the past perfect tense (had prepared) here, the speaker is implying that something else happened subsequently.
If nothing did, the correct way to say this would be, “I have prepared it.”
To learn more about tenses, join our public workshop Use Grammar with Confidence on 20 & 21 October 2014.
Jolynn Chow 