An hour ago, I was startled by a sound.

It wasn’t a loud noise. It wasn’t even an unexpected sound. I’ve heard the same sound three times a day for the last ten years. It’s the muffled soft chime of a dumb waiter. For the last decade, I’ve heard the sound almost to the minute at 8am, 1pm and 6pm. It means that my breakfast, lunch or dinner has arrived and is waiting for me in the small cavity behind the wooden panel door.

It’s always the same pattern. Breakfast with the morning paper, lunch, then dinner with the evening paper and a small bottle of wine. Different food, always well prepared, tasty – much better than I’d have cooked. Much better also than the cheap restaurant meals I used to buy what seems a lifetime ago.

A lifetime ago, I was a thirty-something single woman with no attachments other than an ageing cat. I rented a modest apartment on the East Side. Margaret Sullivan- unattached, divorced – who had moved to the city from a country town three years before. In those days, I planned to write a definitive novel. I drifted into a job as children’s book editor for a middling successful publisher. In time, I realise I had nothing original to say and my book remained unwritten.

Mine was a quiet, but not unhappy life. Both parents dead, no close relatives, no children, a failed marriage: mine is the story of millions of men and women in every city on earth. A totally ordinary person. I stress the banality of my life because no matter how hard I think about it, I can’t find even the smallest clue to explain what’s happened to me.

One night I went to a bar close to my flat. I took a manuscript with me for evaluation. I didn’t particularly like going to bars, but this was a peaceful, though drab place and sometimes my flat felt unbearably lonely and claustrophobic.

I sat a table, leafing through the manuscript and nursing my drink. It was a poorly written story so I soon gave up reading and began to look around the bar. The only other patron was a man sitting at the bar.

I’m not sure how it happened but he and I began to talk. Probably he raised a glass, smiled, said something about the weather: the usual thing.

There was nothing about this man that attracted me sexually. He was bald, middle aged, wearing a shabby suit. He looked like a down at luck salesman. I don’t consider myself particularly attractive either, though I’ve kept myself thin and fit. But as I say, the attraction wasn’t sexual. Just two people who happened to be alone striking up a casual conversation.

I was faintly surprised at how pleasant his smile was. He seemed a warm, though reserved man and I found that he shared many of my interests and prejudices in art, books and music. Something about his manner invited confidences, though part of the attraction was just being able to tell a stranger quite intimate things, knowing that in an hour or so he would have left my life forever. It seemed we had something in common. He also came from a country town, his parents had died and, like me, he found it difficult to make friends. So it was a pleasant conversation. Mostly I talked and he insisted on buying the drinks.

I didn’t drink much: perhaps two light beers but when I gathered up the manuscript and stood up to thank him for his company, I felt ill. I was vaguely aware of him helping me out of the bar and hailing a cab. I wanted to tell him that wasn’t necessary, as my apartment was only a short walk away. When I tried to speak however, I passed out on the street. I remember feeling grateful that he caught me before I slid into the gutter.

Of course, the first thing that I realised when I woke was that he had spiked my drink. I found I was fully dressed lying on bed in what seemed to be a hotel room. I was puzzled to find that although I was in a strange room, my head was resting on my favourite pillow. My quilt covered me and on the dressing table was the book that I had been reading a chapter each night before sleeping. And there other familiar objects too. The wardrobe door was slightly ajar and I could see my dresses, coats and shoes. My framed Chagall prints were on the wall and the wall was painted the same colour as the bedroom in my apartment

When I staggered into the bathroom to vomit, there was my perfume, lipstick, comb, medicine – everything all set out as they had been in my apartment. And it was the same through the suite – kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living/dining room and laundry. All my possessions had been placed in the correct order.

Everything, except my cat. Perhaps they thought he would be too much trouble. Every weekend I used to take him on a lead to the local park for a taste of freedom. I hope that someone took him. I loved that cat. He was the only living creature that I loved and they took him from me.

I soon realised there were two other major changes. The first was I was denied a telephone and the second was that while my computer was set up on my desk, there was no Internet connection. While I could learn what was happening in the outside world from my radio or television, I could never send a message to that world.

It’s been ten years since I first opened the door to my suite and walked down the musty, peeling corridor to find a lift that never came when you pressed the button and a gaping hole where stairs would have once run. A hole that disappeared into the dark.

Sometimes, I’ve heard muffled voices drifting up from floors below but whenever I called out, there was always a sudden, mocking silence. The other rooms on my floor were locked and although I have stood for hours listening at their blocked keyholes, I’ve heard nothing.

Whoever’s trapped me in what appears to be a largely derelict hotel built around the 1920’s is both clever and patient. I used to write notes pleading for help and dropped them into the street, which always appears empty, but I think my messages are quickly gathered up and destroyed. As soon as I grew tired of waiting for someone to come out of my hotel to gather the notes- the moment I went inside – the notes disappear. They must have hidden cameras tracking my every move, but I’ve never found them. I’ve also sent notes down in the dumb waiter, but no one has replied.

When I woke that first morning and read the newspaper that came with my breakfast, I realised by the date on the paper that three days had passed since I had collapsed outside the bar. All the movement of my furniture, its exact placement had taken place while I lay drugged on my bed.

At first I thought someone would miss me. Perhaps my employer or a neighbour. Then I realised that I was just another of the thousands of people who disappear in big cities each year. No one that I knew would care.

My captors are cunning. Once, for example, my television set broke down and I sent a note down in the dumb waiter asking them to send a repairman. I ate my lunch and feeling unexpectedly tired, took an afternoon nap. When I woke, a new television set was sitting in place.

I suppose starving or jumping to my death might upset my jailer’s plans but it seems a pretty silly way for me to make a point about my need for independence.

And so this is how I live. Of course, sometimes I grow lonely but then I’ve been lonely all my life.

One day they’ll find me dead and probably will leave my body here, turning into dust in this mausoleum.

I’m alone in one sense, but I know that I’m always surrounded. And somebody cares. Whether my captor or captors love or hate me or simply see me as a laboratory rat in some coldly scientific experiment to see how a person can remain sane while devoid of all human contact, I don’t know.

All I know is that for the first time someone is concerned about me. And that’s enough.

I don’t know why they have sent the dumb waiter to me outside my meal times. It worries – no terrifies me. Once, I would have rushed over to find the reason. Now I sit here shivering. I won’t open the hatchway. They’re not playing by the rules.

I’ll only open the hatchway when it’s my mealtime. I hope by then everything will be back to normal.