Yes you're right, I was in too much of a hurry this morning. However the conditional tense is the determinant here.
Please note the question from the textbook, though: the question is to select a phrase which is nearest in meaning to the original phrase.
The whole thing is a bit clunky, but they were not actually looking for a better way of expressing this; only for the phrase nearest in meaning from a list supplied.
I didn't realise that at first.
