We use the past perfect simple to talk about what happened before a point in the past. It looks back from a point in the past to further in the past.
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I hadn't known the bad news when I spoke to him.
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I checked with the supplier and they still hadn't received the contract.
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She had already told him before I got a chance to give him my version.
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The company has started the year well but was badly hit by the postal strike.
The past perfect simple is often used when we report what people had said/thought/believed.
