Darren had the best phone, so he was director. Steve wanted to be Grant Silverthorne, but he didn’t have the look. We convinced Chris from the football team to play Grant. Debbie played Francesca Fox, international cat-burglar, and she brought along Kate. We filmed straight after school.

The house on Southbridge Grove still looks exactly like a Canadian hunting lodge. After Kate dropped the clapperboard, I dialled Chris’s number. He was better than any of us expected.

‘Hello… I knew it. When someone builds a time machine, they’re asking for trouble. This sounds like a job for Grant Silverthorne. Ex-FBI. I’ll find that time machine if it’s the first thing I do.’

Chris slid on sunglasses.

Kate rolled her eyes.

Darren called, ‘Cut.’

Scene two, next house. The Turing House, with its metal roof and drawbridge to the first floor, still looks more like an industrial unit.

‘Well, professor, lay it on me.’

‘They broke into the lab,’ Steve stammered, white coat flapping in the wind, grey wig slipping down towards his glasses. ‘They took the time machine. Luckily, with this transponder, I know they travelled back to June 2nd, 1885.’

‘June 2nd, 1885. That’s the day the famous Blue Diamond was brought to Crowborough House. If memory serves, that house once sat on the very spot where this laboratory now sits. I deduce they plan to steal the diamond.’

‘We can follow them.’

‘How?’

‘Because why build one time machine… when you can build two!’

Darren panned his phone to an old refrigerator now covered in glue-gunned circuitry and drainage pipes. I can still hear Kate’s words when she first saw it:

‘Why the hell would the professor write “Time Machine” on his own invention?’

Scene three, 1885. The house on the corner still looks like an old stone farm house.

Black leotard and cat-ears, Debbie had gone all out with the cat-woman costume, but it worked. She held up the diamond.

‘I’m taking this to the future and you can’t stop me.’

‘But…’ gasped Steve, ‘That’ll change the future.’

Chris pushed Steve aside. ‘Not if Grant Silverthorne has anything to say about it.’

Debbie turned and fled.

Scene four we filmed amongst the trees around Kents Hill playground as Debbie and Chris fought it out for the diamond:

‘I spent five years with the Masters of Shaolin perfecting the art of Monkey Kung-fu.’

‘Pathetic little boy, you should have learnt Krav Maga.’

Finally, Francesca was captured, the diamond returned, and the time machines brought back to the future.

As quickly as we could, Kate and I smeared blue makeup over our faces.

Kate shook her head. ‘This is so lame.’

Darren got us in frame as Grant Silverthorne, Francesca Fox and the professor arrived back in the present.

‘But…’ stammered Debbie, ‘everyone’s blue.’

Steve adjusted his glasses. ‘We changed the future.’

Chris dropped to his knees. ‘No. You maniacs! God damn you all to hell!’

Kate rolled her eyes.

It was a wrap.