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So, I am trying to help my friend with his novel. It is completely written using the past tense. I need help from you to check if the following sentence is correct.
As luck would have it, they all ended up getting jobs in the same city. Together, they rented a two-bedroom house and had been living there ever since.
I am trying to keep everything in the past. So, is it okay if I use past perfect continuous tense for the last part with 'ever since'?
It doesn't read correctly. "Had been living there ever since" in isolation is fine, but the whole thing reads badly because the tenses don't match throughout.
Ideally, it should say:
As luck would have it, they had all got jobs in the same city. Together, they rented a two-bedroom house and had been living there ever since.
When you say that the whole novel is in the past tense, you still have to remember that the narrator is speaking as if they are in the present, recounting the past. When you say "they all ended up getting jobs in the city" it sounds like you are finishing up the anecdote and bringing the reader up the present, so it feels like you should be saying "they have been living there ever since", which would mean that they were still living there until now (the present).
