Meal hasn’t started, it’s confidential (5)
I believe the answer is:
inner
'confidential' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'meal hasn't started' is the wordplay.
'meal' becomes 'dinner ' (dinner is a kind of meal).
'hasn't started' means to remove the first letter.
'dinner' with its initial letter removed is 'INNER'.
'it's' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for inner that I've seen before include "Deep" , "Target next to the bull's-eye on a dart board" , "Opposite of 13" , "Central area of a city, often old" , "Situated within" .)